Royal Opera
3rd October 2008
La Calisto is one of the earliest operas you’re likely to hear. A lot of opera still sounds quite similar to me. Barry can listen to a piece of music and he pretty much knows what year it was written. I can’t do that, or I didn’t think I could. But there is something quite early-sounding about La Calisto. I don’t quite know what it was, but I thought it was worth mentioning because a lot of people would say it’s important to get a sense of being true to the composer and playing and singing in a ‘contemporary’ way. The conductor was Ivor Bolton.
But it was only the music that seemed contemporary. The sets seemed really modern, a bit like the inside of a nightclub. Bright colours everywhere. Calisto was dressed in what looked like a leopard-skin leotard with a short, see-through dress over the top. Not very virginal! That took some getting used to. The set designs were by Paul Steinberg and I suppose they probably were original and inventive, but they didn’t really seem to work with the story all that well. Buki Shiff designed the costumes, I liked them but they didn’t seem quite right somehow.
The singing was really interesting. The counter tenor Dominique Visse stood out for me because I’ve never heard a voice like his before. I’ve heard counter tenors but nothing like this, it was lovely though. He sang the roles of Nature, Satirino and Second Fury. I liked him as Satirino, he’s supposed to be half-goat I think and he was a bit like a goat the way he skipped round the stage. Guy de Mey is a tenor, but he was singing the female role of Linfea. He really seemed to be enjoying being feminine a lot, he was very funny.
But my favourite of all was probably Joao Fernandes as Giove. Umberto Chiummo was supposed to be singing the role, but he was ill, so they had to get another singer to sing the role. The others say there isn’t always an official understudy in place to take over roles and even when there is they won’t always get to perform. So sometimes they have to go to other countries to find singers, which must be really awkward when a singer drops out on the day of a performance. But he was great, he was funny and even though Giove really is a bit of a prat he did have lots of charisma so Calisto didn’t seem totally stupid for being taken in by him. When he was disguised as Diana he was singing falsetto and he still sounded great.
Sally Matthews was excellent as Calisto, her voice is really beautiful, but she was also very good at the acting and the dancing. Like I said she wasn’t dressed like a virgin, but she still managed to seem innocent sometimes. It was really clever the way she was quite innocent and sometimes shy, but she never faded into the background.
The other females didn’t make quite such a strong impression even though Monica Baceli and Veronique Gens were both playing goddesses, Diana and Giunone. But it must be difficult for Diana to make an impression when the fake Diana (Giove in disguise) is funny just because he’s a bass pretending to be a soprano. Veronique Gens was quite funny sometimes as Giove’s jealous wife.
It was a very long opera, I think some of it was cut but it was still long and some parts seemed quite slow. But there was lots of it I really enjoyed.
Madam Caterpillar
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